Do visuospatial and constructional disturbances differentiate frontal variant of frontotemporal dementia and Alzheimer's disease? An experimental study of a clinical belief

✍ Scribed by Dario Grossi; Nina Antonetta Fragassi; Laura Chiacchio; Luigi Valoroso; Rosaria Tuccillo; Concetta Perrotta; Paola Rapone; Giovanna Conchiglia; Luigi Trojano

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2002
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 78 KB
• Volume: 17
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0885-6230
• DOI: 10.1002/gps.654

✦ Synopsis

Background:

In recent years several attempts have been made to distinguish frontotemporal dementia (ftd) from alzheimer's disease (ad) on neuropsychological grounds; in particular, it has been suggested that ftd patients show spared spatial abilities with respect to ad patients.

Objective:

We aimed at verifying whether patients with the frontal variant of frontotemporal dementia (fv-ftd) and ad patients perform differently on visuospatial and constructional tasks.

Methods:

We assessed a wide range of visuospatial abilities and provided a qualitative analysis of constructional performances in 14 fv-ftd patients and 11 ad patients, matched for general cognitive abilities.

Results:

The two groups of patients achieved similar scores on two copying tasks, presented similar drawing procedures in copying rey complex figure and made a similar quantitative and qualitative pattern of errors in copying simple geometrical drawings. moreover, no significant difference was found between fv-ftd and ad patients on a specific battery for visuospatial abilities.

Conclusions:

Our data and a review of the literature suggest that basic visuospatial and constructional skills cannot be taken as a reliable diagnostic criterion for distinguishing fv-ftd and ad at a mild to moderate disease stage and that the clinical belief of spared spatial abilities in fv-ftd has to be referred to the lack of topographic disorientation in comparison to ad.